June 13, 2025 - anti capitalist musings

BRICS

When Principles Are Selective: BRICS, the Global South, and the Silence on Ukraine

BRICS condemns the bombing of Gaza and strikes on Iran with the language of international law, civilian protection, and sovereignty. But when it comes to Ukraine (a country invaded by one of its founding members) the silence is deafening. This isn’t a blind spot. It’s the logic of bloc politics. BRICS positions itself as a voice for the Global South, an alternative to Western hypocrisy, but it has its own double standards. Anti-imperialism loses its meaning if it only runs one way. The emerging multipolar order may be less Western, but it is not necessarily more just.

Gaza

When the Powerful Kill: Why Israel and Russia Get Away with War Crimes

The phrase “rules-based international order” has become a punchline. When Russia bombs a maternity hospital, it’s a war crime. When Israel flattens a refugee camp, it’s self-defence. The ICC pursues African warlords and Balkan generals with zeal—but stalls or retreats when the accused are allies of Washington or clients of London. The problem isn’t that international law exists. It’s that it doesn’t apply to everyone. War crimes are prosecuted not on the basis of what’s done, but who does it, and who they do it for.

Graphic in distressed orange, black, and olive green. The image shows ruined buildings silhouetted against a stark sky, with jagged barbed wire stretching across the foreground. The word “GAZA” appears in large, block letters at the top, evoking a sense of confinement, devastation, and resistance.

Ethnic Cleansing

This Is Ethnic Cleansing—Call It What It Is

Behind the talk of “humanitarian cities” and postwar development lies a brutal truth: this is a plan to herd Palestinians into ghettos, fence them in, and call it aid. When Blair’s thinktank is on calls about a “Trump Riviera” in Gaza, you know the project isn’t reconstruction—it’s removal.

A digital illustration depicts a heavily fortified Los Angeles under an oppressive orange sky. The Olympic rings loom ominously above the downtown skyline. In the foreground, ICE officers in tactical gear oversee handcuffed detainees being led toward a black van, surrounded by barbed wire fencing and floodlights. Military helicopters circle overhead, reinforcing the atmosphere of surveillance and state control.

ICE

The Five Rings of Surveillance

They say the Games are about unity, but what’s happening in LA tells a different story

A grainy, vintage-style image depicting a dense urban skyline with mid-rise buildings. A large, dark plume of smoke rises ominously from the city centre, suggesting a recent explosion. The image is rendered in a washed-out, sepia-orange tone, evoking a 1968 protest poster aesthetic with high contrast and nostalgic texture. A mosque minaret is visible among the buildings, hinting at the city's Middle Eastern setting.

Book Review

A Requiem for Human Rights

What separates Hedges’s account from the usual war reporting is his refusal to speak in the language of balance. There are no “both sides” here. Gaza is not a tragedy. It is a crime. And history, in his telling, is not analogy but repetition. The Nakba never ended. The airstrikes are new; the logic is old. “We progress backwards,” someone has scrawled on a UN school wall. That line could be the book’s thesis.

A vintage-style protest poster rendered in grainy halftone with a jaundiced beige and olive green palette. The image shows British soldiers in uniform, in a casual moment during a military inspection. Bold black text beneath reads: “SMILE FOR THE CROWN WHILE YOU OCCUPY THE STREETS.” The design evokes 1968 protest aesthetics with a stark critique of military presence and royal authority.

Imperialism

Who Is the Violence For?

This month, the British state made its position on violence unambiguous: while ex-generals and loyal newspapers led the charge, Parliament followed. The result was clear: Impunity for its own, criminalisation for its critics. In the same month it moved to quash investigations into war crimes in Northern Ireland, it voted to proscribe Palestine Action under terrorism law.

Alexander Dugin

Trump, Dugin, and the Eschatology of Reaction

Trump is no longer a politician in Dugin’s hands. He is a prophet who fell short. But the prophecy lives on. That’s how Dugin works: he turns failure into myth, betrayal into destiny. Putinism becomes the sacred, Trumpism the fallen. Everything is wrapped in theology, because the politics (when you look closely) aren’t up to much. It’s not tradition he’s defending. It’s accelerationism with a whiff of incense.

Imperialism

No One Is Above the Law—Not Even the SAS

The state demands loyalty from its killers, and contempt for those who ask why. To question the SAS is treated as heresy. To investigate them, as betrayal. But no one is above the law. Not even the men with night-vision goggles and state-sanctioned impunity. If the victims of British state violence are to be denied justice so that the myth of military virtue can remain intact, then we are not a democracy. We continue to be an empire that refuses to admit it.

A digitally stylised, sepia-toned image depicting a large industrial fire at night from missile or bomb damage. Thick black smoke billows into the sky from a structure engulfed in flames, while bright streetlights cast dramatic glares across the scene. In the foreground, railway tracks and barriers are visible.

The Bomb and the Barrier: Israel’s Strike on Iran and the Logic of Imperialism

Israel’s strike on Iran is not self-defence—it is the brutal enforcement of a global hierarchy, where some states may possess the bomb and others must die for trying.

A stylised graphic in a 1968 protest-poster aesthetic shows a hooded figure silhouetted in black, arms outstretched, standing before a fiery red and white explosion. The background is highly textured with grainy, distressed effects. In the bottom right, bold red and black block capitals read: “BRITAIN’S POGROM LOGIC.”

Britain’s Pogrom Logic

The mob lit the match, but it was the right-wing press that soaked the ground and stood back to watch it burn.